Professor Stanley Osher has been Awarded the Gauss Prize

Stanley Osher, UCLA professor of mathematics and director of applied
mathematics, is the third person ever to be awarded the prestigious
Gauss Prize, the highest honor in applied mathematics.

A UCLA professor since 1977, Osher received the award Wednesday
afternoon local time during the opening ceremony of the
International Congress of Mathematicians in Seoul, South Korea. The
prize, named for 19th century mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss,
was first awarded at the 2006 congress. (The event is held every
four years.)

The citation honoring Osher said he has made “influential
contributions to several fields in applied mathematics and his
far-ranging inventions have changed our conception of physical,
perceptual, and mathematical concepts, giving us new tools to
comprehend the world.”

Osher has collaborated with colleagues in a wide range of fields and
the mathematical techniques he has pioneered have been highly
influential. The results of his research have improved MRI scans and
medical image analysis, advanced computer chip design, helped law
enforcement agencies combat crime, enhanced computer vision,
provided new ways to forecast weather and identify the source of
earthquakes, and even revolutionized computer modeling for the
design of supersonic jets.

“I am truly honored to have been awarded the third Carl Friedrich
Gauss prize,” Osher said. “The previous winners were two of my
scientific heroes. I am grateful to the UCLA administration and to
my colleagues in the mathematics department for their support in
building up applied mathematics, and to many of many colleagues
outside of the department for the incredibly pleasant
interdisciplinary research atmosphere that exists here.

“I’d also like to thank my sister, Sondra Jaffe, for convincing me
that we could both join the middle class by becoming mathematicians
in the post-Sputnik era.”

Osher has created innovative numerical methods to solve partial
differential equations, and analyzed algorithms and their underlying
partial differential equations. He also produced a new method for
accurately describing how objects change shapes — predicting how,
for example, a drop of oil floating in water will morph based on
currents in the water, including what would happen if the drop of
oil divided in two or merged with another drop of oil.

“Stan Osher is a superb applied mathematician who has made major
advances in the solution of important real-world problems,” said
Joseph Rudnick, senior dean of the UCLA College and dean of physical
sciences. “His work is marked by elegance and efficiency. He richly
deserves this important honor.”

The recipient of many previous awards, Osher was elected in 2005 to
the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 to the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow
and a Fulbright Fellow, and was selected to give a plenary address
at the 2010 International Conference of Mathematicians and the John
von Neumann Lecture at the 2013 meeting of the Society for
Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Osher was among the top 1 percent of the most frequently cited
scholars in both mathematics and computer science between 2002 and
2012. His research was the subject of three-day “Osher Fests” at
UCLA in 2002 and 2012.

He also the director of special projects at UCLA’s NSF-funded
Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, where he has organized
and participated in numerous workshops and programs.

Osher has trained and mentored more than 50 Ph.D. students and even
more postdoctoral scholars, many of whom have become distinguished
professors and researchers in applied mathematics. His students, one
of whom received an Academy Award, have used mathematics to create
special effects in dozens of movies, including “Pirates of the
Caribbean.”

Osher said he is proud to be a professor at UCLA, whose applied
mathematics department is ranked No. 2 in the U.S., per U.S. News
and World Report, and whose pure mathematics department is also
regarded among the best in the country.
He has said of his own research, “I write the algorithms that make
the computer sing. I’m the Barry Manilow of mathematics.”